HSAC Blog

Our sports group has just made its first mark in the academic world!  Follow the link to the spring issue of the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports to read our first published paper, “Improving Park Factors in Major League Baseball“.  In it, we devise an alternate method of calculating park factors for MLB ballparks that is more accurate than many of models currently used by large sports networks such as ESPN.  For a more detailed description, here is the abstract:

 The study of Park Factors (PF) is essential to the correct evaluation of player performance in Major League Baseball. We have identified two important problems with the commonly used formula which has been popularized by ESPN: it produces variable results due to unbalanced scheduling, and it has an inherent inflationary bias. To address these problems, we develop a new estimator for Park Factors using an ANOVA weighted fixed-effects model for run generation. Using simulated data, in addition to run data from 2000 through 2006, we show that this new estimator does not have the biases of the old estimator. From a strategic viewpoint, accurate PF values are needed to properly evaluate free agents and trade proposals, as well as to compare players for postseason awards. We develop a method to adjust statistics using Park Factors called a Neutral Park Adjustment (NPA), which takes into account the Park Factors of the entire schedule of a player, not simply their home park.  

Over at The Biz of Baseball, Maury Brown provides some excellent analysis of the Forbes Valuations of MLB teams over the past 6 years:

Overall, the most obvious news is owners are making money, and lots of it. Using the overblown cliché, they are hitting the ball out of the park. There may be disparity between the amounts of revenue clubs are pulling in, but no owner could claim with a straight face that they aren’t making money these days. It’s just that some clubs are making more than others are. As Badenhausen [senior editor, and co-author of the Forbes valuations] rightly said, “After listening to baseball owners cry poverty for 25 years, the outcries have been relatively few the last couple of years because baseball is in what like Bud Selig likes to call a ‘Golden Age’.”

I would encourage you to read the entire article, but the main takeaway is clear: baseball is in great financial shape, despite the Mitchell Report, the Roger Clemens saga, and escalating free agent contracts.

Ryan Dreyer, a co-op for the Boston Globe’s sports section, contacted me recently with some questions regarding MLB’s financial state. I have posted his questions and my answers below (click Read More to view). If anyone else has any thoughts or input on these questions or other issues related to baseball’s financial state, please feel free to comment. Ryan can be reached directly at ryand@bu.edu, or at his blog, www.sellthecubs.blogspot.com.

[Read more →]

Each year, immediately after the draft, a variety of media sources publish their draft grades. Basically, these grades tell the readers if the team did a good job at picking the players that were conventionally popular (because if a team picked a player that they liked, but nobody else did, that would be immediately perceived as a bad pick). Most graders admit that it is impossible to judge a team’s class immediately after the draft…yet since these columns are popular, almost every website and magazine produces post draft grades anyway.

As expected, these grades are pretty useless at predicting how good each team’s draft class will be. Grading the draft after 3 full seasons gives a more accurate assessment of each team’s personnel department.

Scouts Inc. at ESPN.com has done exactly that in this article:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/draft08/news/story?id=3333998

In the article, they create a composite “post-draft grade” that includes grades from ESPN, SI, Yahoo!, etc. and then they contrast these grades with a current grade based on how the players have panned out. Needless to say, there are some huge disparities.

GM A.J. Smith’s San Diego Chargers are the only team to earn an “A” today. His risky first rounds picks of Shawne Merriman and Luis Castillo turned out to be fantastic. Merriman played DE in college and some teams wondered if he could make the transition to LB. Castillo had tested positive for steroids in college. Ironically, Merriman has tested positive for steroids in the NFL–while becoming one of the top LB’s in the game…a link? We’ll save that for another article.

As you can guess, the grades don’t match up too well. To test the correlations, I converted the grades to the familiar GPA scale (A=4, A-=3.67, B+=3.33, etc.). There is a slightly positive correlation between high grades on draft day and high grades today. The slope of the line is .3, but the linear regression only accounts for 3.1% (r^2=.031) of the variation in grades. So, the draft day grades are almost useless at predicting the future grades…no surprise there.

More interestingly, the average grade awarded on draft day was a 2.85 (B/B-) while the average grade today was a 2.32 (C+). 2005 turned out to be a particularly weak class, but it is interesting that the grades on the whole were considerably higher than they should have been. It would be cool to see if this relationship holds for all years. If so, it would probably mean that the media expects too much from the draft.

So when you read those draft grades in a couple weeks, don’t get too excited if your team gets an A and don’t fret if your favorite squad gets a D. As for your grades on midterms and finals…those unfortunately are a pretty good predictors of your ultimate grade at the end of the year.

Spring training is already underway in Florida and Arizona, and it’s even starting to thaw out a bit up here in New England.  This is the time of year when all 30 teams have high aspirations for the season, no matter whether they are coming off a World Series championship like the Red Sox or haven’t made the playoffs in 16 years like the Pirates.  Well, maybe the Pirates don’t have such high hopes for the season.  But this is a time when teams get a chance to look at their big prospects and see if they are major league ready.  Rookies this year such as Evan Longoria, 3B of the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays, Joey Votto, 1B of the Cincinnati Reds, and starting pitchers Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain of the Yankees will look to make a big impact.  However, perhaps the most exciting rookie to watch out for this year will be the Boston Red Sox’ young centerfielder Jacoby Ellsbury. [Read more →]

This is sort of self-serving, but I wanted to direct people to an article I wrote with my friend David Lewin for Football Outsiders. It is a discussion of some of the biggest off-season issues in the NFC East. We work in a little bit of the typical Outsiders analysis. At this point, a lot of the article is old news, but you still may enjoy it.

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/2008/03/04/ramblings/four-downs/6174/

David wrote most of the Giants and Redskins stuff and I handled the Cowboys and Eagles sections.

David Pinto (Class of 1982, Mather House), author of the popular site Baseball Musings was a guest speaker this past Thursday and spoke to members of HSAC about his entry into baseball journalism. We encourage anyone with an interest in baseball to check out his site.

Mike Greenwell has just been voted into to the Red Sox’ HOF. On Sep. 2, 1996 he had one of the most amazing offensive games ever, batting in all 9 runs in a Red Sox 9-8 win over Seattle. Five other players have had more RBI in a game (the record is 12 for a game), but those happened in landslide wins, while every single one of Mike’s 9 RBIs was necessary to win. Greenwell’s 9 is the “necessary RBI” record. Necessary RBIs only include those RBIs required to win the game. Example: A player with 10 RBI in a 16-9 rout only produced 4 RBI that were necessary for a victory, 10-9, in this case. The other 6 RBI were unneeded for victory. I don’t know what the next highest MLB NecRBI record is, after Greenwell’s 9. Perhaps it is about 6 RBI — that needs research. If it is 6, then Greenwell’s 9 NecRBI in a game may last for a lifetime.  Producing nine necessary RBI in a game is no less impressive than hitting 4 homers or getting 12 RBI. It surely deserves to be recognized as an extraordinary achievement at the November Red Sox Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

Growing up, I always had a special affinity for point guards.  They were the “floor generals,” or the quarterbacks of the basketball team, and were thus in the driver’s seat for every offensive possession.  I was somewhat indifferent to the other positions, as I knew for a fact that the point guard was the most important; but I did have a certain affection for small forwards as well.  How could I not?  These guys were generally the most versatile on the court: they could pass, shoot, dribble and rebound, and use their length and athleticism to play impressive defense (Scottie Pippen was one of the best one-on-one defenders in NBA history, and seemingly did everything else well too.  Tayshaun Prince and Ron Artest are more recent ones who fit this mold as well).  In other words, these guys were special, and knew how to fill up a stat sheet like no one else.  But what does this mean?  Were my assumptions as a child correct?  As long as your center could rebound and play good defense (think Dikembe Mutombo), and your shooting guard could hit an open jumper and 3 (think Reggie Miller), you should be in good shape, I reasoned, since it was the point guard controlling the offense anyway.  It’s not like you would be relying on the center or shooting guard to control the ball.  Was it right to examine a team from the point guard position up and weight the positions like so?  If you think it was, then you must have a different definition of success in basketball than I do. [Read more →]